Why Tailoring Matters
Recruiters spend about 6 seconds scanning a resume. Six seconds to decide if you're worth a closer look.
A generic resume — the same one you send to every job — says "I didn't read your posting." It buries your best qualifications under irrelevant experience.
A tailored resume says "I'm exactly what you're looking for." It puts your most relevant skills front and center, using the language the employer already used in their job description.
That's the difference between the ATS black hole and the interview pile.
The Step-by-Step Process
Decode the job description
Read it twice. The first time, get the gist. The second time, highlight:
- Must-have skills (usually listed first or marked as "required")
- Nice-to-haves (often under "preferred" or "bonus")
- The language they use (do they say "stakeholder management" or "cross-functional collaboration"?)
Mirror their language
If the job posting says "project management," don't write "overseeing initiatives." Use their words. This isn't about gaming the system — it's about speaking the same language.
Reorder your bullets
Your most relevant experience should come first under each role. If you're applying for a marketing position and you did 30% marketing, 70% operations in your last job — lead with the marketing.
Adjust your summary
Your professional summary should reflect this role, not your entire career. Two sentences that directly address what they're looking for.
Cut the noise
If it doesn't support this application, consider removing it. That retail job from college? Probably not helping your senior engineering application.
The Time Problem
Here's the catch: tailoring properly takes 20-30 minutes per application.
If you're actively job hunting — applying to 10, 20, 30 roles — that's a full-time job just preparing applications.
This is why people end up sending generic resumes. Not because they don't know better, but because making a resume from scratch for every job isn't sustainable.
The solution isn't to skip tailoring. It's to automate it.
AI tools can match your existing experience to job descriptions automatically — highlighting your relevant skills, adjusting emphasis, even suggesting language improvements. What took 30 minutes now takes 30 seconds.
Same idea whether you call it a resume or a CV: show the most relevant proof, fast.
Tailor CV prompts
If you use AI to speed things up, the trick is to use tailor CV prompts that produce concrete, ATS-friendly edits — not fluffy rewrites.
- “Given this job description, reorder my bullet points so the most relevant impact appears first under each role. Keep everything truthful.”
- “Rewrite 5 bullets using action + result. Keep numbers where possible. Don’t add skills I don’t have.”
- “Suggest keywords to mirror from the job post, then show where they naturally fit in my existing experience.”
One prompt to tailor your resume is pretty basic. For more intelligent tailoring workflow in one click, use VibeCV.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
Keyword Stuffing
Don't just dump keywords from the job posting into your resume. ATS systems are smarter than that, and humans definitely notice.
Lying
Tailoring means emphasizing relevant truth, not inventing experience. Never worth the risk.
Over-Tailoring
You should still sound like yourself. Don't contort your entire career to fit one job.
Want to tailor your CV without the grind?
Paste a job description into VibeCV and get a tailored resume in one click. Your relevant experience highlighted, ATS-optimized, ready to download as a Word document.
Tailor Your CV NowNeed a base resume first? Start with how to generate a resume.